The Agbor Rising

Photo: "Mud figures of Chief and Attendants and Commissioner of Police. North Ika" – G. I. Jones, 1930s.

On 9 June 1906 the Ekumeku Society was in the news again, in connection with the killing of O.S. Crewe-Read [Iredi or Rédì], District Commissioner. Crewe-Read, together with an escort of fifty-three men, was on a visit to Uteh — a town in the Agbor district — and had halted for the day in Owa. [T]wo men, who were sent by Crewe-Read to summon the rest of the men of the town … returned late in the evening to report that the people refused to see him, … two policemen … sent to Agbor with telegrams … requesting assistance … were stopped … and the telegrams snatched from them. They barely escaped with their lives. With such a small force and no hope of immediate relief, Crewe-Read started back for Agbor on 9 June, but was ambushed at a place not far away from the town of Owa-Aliosimi. There he received two fatal gunshot wounds[.]

On receiving the news headquarters sent an army under Captain Rudkin to Agbor to ‘punish’ the killers, but in an encounter with the natives of Agbor, two European officers sustained serious wound, two soldiers were killed and twnety-six wounded. … A section of the column managed to reach Owa and did not encounter opposition immediately, and was therefore able to search for the body of Crewe-Read, which was found buried in the bush between the spot where he was killed and the town. It was exhumed and removed to Benin for burial. The battle that followed ended with the capture of the chiefs of Owa, Igbenoba, Inyibo, Ukute I, Ukute II, Ikaria, Ekuneme, Echenim, Tete and Ijioma. On 26 September 1906, these men were found guilty of murder and sentenced to execution by the judge of the supreme court of Nigeria, J.M.M. Dunlop.

– S. N. Nwabara (1978). “Iboland: a century of contact with Britain, 1860-1960”. p. 130–131.

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[E]vents show the lack of sympathy coupled with the resort to driving tactics which could characterise early British rule in new districts. ... It was Crewe- Read's practice too, according to Gilpin, to flog the boys of the different towns in Agbor 'for not turning up to work on the roads as a rule'. Crewe-Read's … end in the Agbor district was … foreshadowed by the events of the first quarer of 1906. When he was an acting District Commissioner, Benin City district, the poeple of Alidinma had refused to see him at Akuku while on tour to the area. … Crewe-Read was not pleased by [the British D. C. Asaba’s] letter in which the … officer expressed the view that it was ‘hard not to say cruel to take people away at this time of the year'. Without any special qualification for knowing the Agbor people better, Crewe-Read pompously asserted that he ‘was the best judge if it was hard and cruel.

– Philip A. Igbafe (1967). "The 'Benin Scare' of 1906". In: “The African Historian”. pp. 10–11.